Cheaters in PVP Across all versions of the game.

[SpectreKP]

I bought Monster sanctuary on steam back when it was still in beta, and then my brother blackmailed me into getting the game on the Switch. The reason being is that my brother is a heavy PVP nut, and is having issues testing out his teams thanks to a certain player basically hogging PVP times with a team who basically counters most teams and mysteriously almost always goes first (and even if you pull out a counter for the team, they'll just swap to a counter to the counter).

So the primary issue is that my brother has found is that he's playing the game completely fair and square (Playing and beating random players), while everyone else on the leaderboards is apparently cheating by boosting their ranks through organised battles and completely destroying the spirit of what leaderboards actually are. He discovered this cheating originally when he noticed two Japanese accounts had been playing each other in order to boost one by 30 wins in half an hour (which is to say, 1 win per minute). Which is literally an impossible feat when playing the game fairly, especially when the person who is at the top of the ranks is almost online every day and scaring literally anyone peeking into PVP to test the waters off. My brother was really pissed about this, so after about 8 private matches.. which I won the majority of, he had me challenge him on the leaderboards 5 times with the intent to actually beat him (as in full matches, no giving up unless there was absolutely 0 chance for me to win).. and he destroyed me in these matches, but these 5 matches still took about 15-20 minutes.. and he won fair and square. I only got salty when I couldn't even beat a single one of his monsters until the 4th match.. which just goes to show how much work he puts into his teams. And the person at the top of the leaderboard is even better than he is. At least, that's what my brother thought originally.

Eventually, my brother decided to have a look at a Monster Sanctuary Discord or something for his own reasons, I think he was looking into how the update was coming along.. and right in the view of the public, he saw that basically everyone on the leaderboards were discussing schemes on cheating up their rank. Apparently, the person who stood at the top of the leaderboard, who's team(s) are so amazingly good that they singlehandedly scare off everyone who tries to dip their fingers into PVP and are personally responsible for killing the feature for so many people who play Monster Sanctuary.. cares so much about their rank, that they're not only cheating to be far above literally everyone to the point where it's impossible to catch up even by cheating, but they're also apparently playing on every single version of the game and hogging the top spot in all of the games. In my brother's own words: He thought this person rightfully deserved their place due to their skill and hard work, but now he's realised that they're nothing, worthless and stupid. This person HAS the skill to legitimately remain in the top place on the leaderboard, yet still decides to cheat to keep their rank and can't be stopped due to the fact their team is legitimately good.. it's such a waste of talent in my personal opinion.

I am aware that I am probably putting myself or my brother at risk by attempting to expose these cheaters, when they're blatantly talking about cheating on a public server (I don't know which one exactly, I just know it's a monster sanctuary discord).. but I personally believe that in PVP, there should be no cheaters allowed. If anyone has ever lost a match with the person who is at the top of the leaderboard once.. maybe you got unlucky enough to match up with them multiple times and simply lost over and over, enough times to completely give up on PVP and never look back, you absolutely understand this feeling. PVP in Monster Sanctuary is flawed and almost meaningless, I mean, just for starters, the top player can be matched up with the worst player. This is incredibly unfair to new players dipping their toes into the mode. Players can also be matched up with the same person MULTIPLE times with barely, if any restrictions. This allows cheaters to arrange matches with their friends or alt accounts and bump up their score, but also allows for more skilled players to just destroy weaker players in a landslide. The whole reason basically one person is able to hog the entire mode to themselves is that there are no restrictions on match making, and they've literally scared off anyone else who enters into this.. "domain".

Even if all that's done is restrict how many times a player can fight the same person in a day, that would greatly reduce the amount of cheating on the leaderboard (Again, 30 wins in half an hour is impossible without refighting the same person and having them surrender). Although personally I'd like to see a harsher system that could detect a rapid growth in wins in a short time, check to see if the opponents threw the match (Gave up early, never attacked, used under leveled monsters, didn't use skills) and then either booted the player's names from the leaderboard and prevented them from being placed back on for the rest of the season (They'd still be able to enter matches, but the results won't effect the rankings), or ban the account from PVP completely until the season ends. But yeah, just restricting how many times a player can fight the same person would work somewhat well to counter the current method of cheating, it'd work even better with restrictions placed so that players are more likely to be placed up against players of similar skill level (which is to say, someone with over 100 losses won't be paired up with someone with over 100 wins). I understand nothing will probably be done against these cheaters, but I had to vent out my dislike for a mode when the biggest reason I don't play it is actively plaguing it.

[SpectreKP]

So apparently this thread was able to cause a lot of panic among people in the discord who read it and are attempting to defend themselves for their conduct. I will just add a few things to say to the hornet nest that I kicked: I had the option to privately contact the devs through a ticket, but decided to bring this topic to the public so that people who's voices snuffed out to resurface.. and for the cheaters to basically understand that if they continue what they're doing, either for ranking or rewards.. they're probably going to kill PVP in Monster Sanctuary permanently.. to the point the dev may have to remove it, or at least get rid of the leaderboard. Then nobody prospers.

Concerned -ahem- players worried that I am accusing them of cheating are more than welcome to send me a private message/friend request or whatever they need to contact me, but please understand that I am not an outlet to complain to and I don't wish to hear people defend themselves or make attempts to blackmail me. Please note that if a system is put in place to prevent win boosting, rightfully skilled players will STILL remain on top, so the current almost unstoppable PVP monsters will remain on top.. because no one will be able to wrongfully cheese a system with almost no rules (the only rule really being if a player disconnects, both players receive a loss.. or whatever). Once again, nobody will prosper unless something preventative is done.

Finally, to the people who claim they're doing private matches, rather than ranked ones (don't look for me in the discord, I'm not in it. This is just a very predictable excuse that very few people would believe), do you even realise that private matches give pretty good rewards on occasion? Just a couple rounds of messing around and not taking the matches very seriously netted me several Level 4 & 5 reward boxes, Skill potions and even a few other items like Shift stones and Skill reset stuff. I got these things from both wins, and losses. Rankings are pointless numbers if you don't earn them fairly, and if you enjoy getting things for low effort then just ACTUALLY play private matches for the loot you can get. That's just my advice for anyone who either has two accounts or a friend with free time. Personally, I have the most fun with PVP when nothing is serious and all players involved are messing around. Experiment, maybe you'll find a new team you might like? I imagine that's what the public discord was made for in the first place.. outside ya know, the lack of variety of players due to the monsters you can end up with when going public?

So basically, I know ya'll got your own little comfort zone and I've definitely kicked up the dirt with this topic.. but if one out of the way topic is enough to disturb you, then there's clearly something wrong. I mean, I have no idea why anyone would be AGAINST adding in anti-cheating rules to PVP, considering no one should like a cheater. If you're innocent, actually put up suggestions for Anti-cheating methods that the Dev could implement, rather than panicking and defending yourself. At least then, even if you were guilty of what's being claimed, you'll look less guilty than claiming your innocence and actually contribute to making the mode more fun and inclusive. Plus I'm sure the Dev would really appreciate it.

[Sersch]

Hey SpectreKP,

You have quite a couple claims there painting people in bad light
Our discord is indeed publicly available to everyone, so anyone can just look up that your claims are not true? https://discord.com/invite/C9T7Ven
Pretty much most of the active ranked players are found there and are pretty well known to the community and to us developers, certainly not as cheaters. Quite contrary - top ranked players can be found there giving advice to newer players (not how to cheat but how to become better lol).

I have the feeling you have some very odd interpretation of 'cheating'? Cheating is doing something against the rules, which none of the top players is doing. There are no super rare items in the game, anyone who plays the game somewhat actively gets access to all monsters and all items pretty fast. Those players playing the game a lot or doing many games against each other don't get any advantage by getting additional reward boxes of items they already have plenty of.

Also you DO actually have the possibility to never match against them if you want, simply set your game to never go into 'extended' matchmaking at the NPC next to the matchmaking one, this will ensure that the game will only match you against players that don't have a big rating difference compared to you.

Please feel free provide explanation and proof how exactly those players are 'cheating'.

[Naucitos]

I have to say its a bit wild that you wrote such a long post without explaining any cheating going on except claiming that people are boosting with fake accounts?
As you said yourself, there is no reward for the leaderboard so theres no incentive to boost. Your other complaint seems to just be that you're losing? I think? That they are monsters who destroyed you for daring to step into their domain or something? I'll admit that part of your write up was a bit confusing.

[SpectreKP]

Thank you for the reply, personally my information is second hand from someone who plays the game constantly and watches the leaderboard closely to the point of actually being able to tell where a player's wins are coming from and in some circumstances even how quickly they gain those wins. Of course, what I have personally seen by looking at the leaderboard there is somewhat suspicious (there are players with mysterious amounts of losses), but unlike the person who'd actually been watching the numbers, I haven't been able to visualise this matter personally. Unfortunately, what I know is basically isolated to the Switch version of the game as that was the one I'd played the most thanks to this person.

The primary point of this Thread/Topic was to kick the hornet's nest, so to speak. Basically, bring the attention of the topic to the public to bring the PVP mode into question due to a few factors.. such as how one player can dominate the.. as described "Extended Search", which is basically one the few ways to actually battle random people, and the fact the mode has no preventative measures in place to prevent cheating on the leaderboard.

Now firstly, I did add on that if people wished to remove suspicion on themselves, they'd see the topic and be deeply concerned about the idea that people could even cheat in the first place and put in suggestions prevent it from happening all together. In fact, skilled players should be the most appalled at the thought that other players are boosting their rank on the leaderboard and taking away their rightful place that they earned. After all, preventative measures would stop the problem from happening in the first place. Players at the top should be the first to volunteer ideas for Anti-cheat implementations.

Now for the actual explanation of what leaderboard cheating is; I didn't think it wasn't obvious. To put it simply, two or more players, usually friends, will be in contact with each other and arrange matches with each other where one has no actual chance of losing (any losses are to lower suspicion, or are legitimate losses from other people). Essentially the opponent either has no chance of beating them or simply forfeits in the first few rounds to give the win to the other player. Do this several times, and you can go from being nobody on the leaderboard to ending up in the top 3 easily. The catch is that the person you win against will end up with several losses for each win which makes this method fairly easy to spot the fewer the people are involved (and the fewer natural wins you actually have).

As for evidence, As previously stated I'm not the one who personally noticed the people involved and my information is limited to the switch version. But just looking at the leaderboard.. The top rank person has a rating of "1715", 168 wins and only 13 losses. This is an absolutely astonishing amount that dwarfs anyone else on the leaderboard (to whom currently don't have more than 40 wins), but on the same page, there's someone with 19 wins and 102 losses. Why is there someone with 102 losses on the leaderboard despite the fact they have 19 wins (they're clearly skilled enough to beat other players). I know where at least 20 of those wins came from, and apparently a few more came from the original two that were pointed out to me.. who where the players with the japanese names who were able to take the 2nd place spot in just over 30 minutes? And why were they caught battling each other during times when the top player was offline (timezones) and mysteriously stopped searching for matches after being beaten?

It's not exactly definitive proof, especially seeing as it came from another person who's rank was taken by them over the period it takes to go to the toilet and take a shower by a completely unknown player who wasn't even on the leaderboard, but this person does absolutely despise cheating, especially in pvp and out of several matches with the top player, only ever managed to beat them once due to the fact the "random chance" for who goes first would generally pick them 95% of the time. That's just how Min-Maxed both these players are.

The leaderboard rankings are pretty pointless as you can get every item in the game quite easily and even get duplicates, it's just for bragging rights.. which is exactly why the very mention of foul play should turn heads.

- - -
Dear Naucitos;
You either seem to misunderstand my identity or failed to understand the part where I said I only got upset at my brother because I couldn't kill a single one of his monsters until the 4th match. To clear things up, I am not one of the top players, I don't even have a full Team considering only 4 of my monsters are actually min-maxed to another's self proclaimed perfection. And thus, I don't actually care about losing. <3 (Plus I only ever matched up with my brother, specifically for 5 matches.. then he refused to fight me again until I got a better team because he wanted more of a challenge.)

Also, I never mentioned fake accounts. I said friends and alts, and by alts, I mean they'd have a second switch and would be pitting both accounts against each other to get easy wins. So they'd be very real accounts, even capable of "copying" the top player's team suddenly if you were to beat them.. although possibly failing to perfectly ditto them due to the fact the guy's got min-maxed skill points and equipment that might not be in public view, cause apparently you can actually beat their ditto much more easily than you can beat Juff.

- - -
Btw, even if you figure out who they are, please don't go bothering my brother. I'm the one who brought this up, so direct all attention to me rather than him. I can say for certain that he's just passionate about pvp, and he puts a LOT of work into any game that he plays. I just wanna help bring his concerns to light, so don't go pester him during all this.

[FlowingJuffowup]

You can talk to me directly if you have something to say to me. I can teach you how to get better at the game, if you want. Tell your brother he can ask me anything he wants. Or just go read the team building guide I wrote; it's up on Steam, it's on the Reddit page, it's on the Discord.

[SpectreKP]

Originally posted by FlowingJuffowup:

You can talk to me directly if you have something to say to me.

I personally don't want to get better at the game, I beat it with ease even without my brother's min-maxed hyper damage setup and I have no idea what people were talking about with a difficulty spike. Now I actually HAVE the Hyper damage setup, nothing left in the base game is a challenge.. and it's just 3 monsters. I'm not even copying his best team which includes an even more damaging set up and a creature that self revives.

The only reason I'd done pvp at all was because he wouldn't help me pre-order another game that I couldn't afford at the time, I do have something I could ask, but I personally don't like picturing the end result as I'm very.. VERY aware of just how dedicated he is to games with stat building.

As for the discord, I am not going to join that as I use my discord for my hobby drawing and commissions, I also kinda kicked a hornet nest between claims of leaderboard cheaters, bringing up an actual example that could be used for leaderboard cheating from personal experience and of course bringing up that an anti-cheat should be put in place to prevent this method. It is a fact that I was able to queue up with the same person multiple times on the leaderboard in a row quite easily as long as I had contact with them using extended search. Imagine if we didn't stop after noting how stupid it felt to just play such one-sided matches over and over and that the wins didn't feel good? I could have charged at him like a blind bull for 10, 20, 50 or even 100 rounds because there's no system in place to prevent that, and such a thing just doesn't feel earned, does it? He honestly didn't even care about his placing until he lost it from people who weren't even on the leaderboard while essentially taking care of personal hygiene. Imagine how it'd feel if someone suddenly overtook the 1st place spot while you were eating dinner, but you had a huge lead over everyone.. and the person who'd done it wasn't even on the 1st page. It'd feel like that.

Even if the accusations don't have win by win screenshots, the concerns come from a very real place. Preventing measures for fighting the same person endlessly will make the leaderboard have more meaning, and obviously the method I pointed out that is now public can't be abused by anyone who thought of it previously, before now. This is why instead of defending, one should come up with solutions for the problem presented.

When you see Brutus, you immediately think: I have to destroy this creature, because if he gets off either power focus or receives all out offence, with a heavy punch he can basically wipe out any creature in a single hit. If he gets both off by round 2, he's able to ram charge your entire team into oblivion. I've presented everyone with a Brutus; the leaderboard cheat/win-boost method with communication and extended search. Now come up with a way to beat it before it can Ram Charge.

Exploits like this are generally what beta testers are meant to find and report, and while it might not be against the "rules", it feels really bad that it exists and hasn't been reported to the devs till now.

[Rilvenar]

Spectre,
As with every leaderboard out there there is always a way to "cheat" your way up. either by buying an account, getting boosted by a friend, or otherwise. your view of having to "expose" this for an indie game with a small pvp community "to kick the hornets nest" is baffling to me, but for sake of professionality I'll give you some insight.

First of all, we actually do have anti cheat measures in place. So people can't just hack their way into the leaderboards with each monster having 100 skillpoints for example. among other "filters"

Secondly, even if someone wants to as you say "cheat their way into the leaderboards" then what? as soon as they start playing they will either keep losing and thus get a lower standing or actually stand their ground and not change all that much.

Thirdly, You state So apparently this thread was able to cause a lot of panic among people in the discord who read it and are attempting to defend themselves for their conduct. that you've talked with people on the discord about cheating and gotten panicked comments. yet you've not talked about "cheating" on our official server, nor on the tournament server. making me wonder where you talked or if you even did talk at all.

Fourth, You say you only have "a small amount of data from the switch version" yet in the TITLE you state across ALL platforms.

from where I'm standing you've stated mostly if not all miss information and attempted to shine a bad light not only at us but also our community members which I do take seriously.

I hope that you can understand that we cannot just change people's behavior. Cheating is an age old habit and no amount of rules / preventive measures will ever completely stop that.

Again, feedback is welcome and if we do get definitive proof of cheating or something becomes a real issue we will look into it and take measures accordingly, Until such time/ information I'd like to ask you to stop spreading negativity and miss information.

[Sersch]

Originally posted by SpectreKP:

as described "Extended Search", which is basically one the few ways to actually battle random people,

No, it is not. Not going into Extended Search you will still match with all the same people EXCEPT the ones that by far outrank you. If you can't find opponents without extended search at any given time, then it is simply due to the fact that no one is in the queue.

Originally posted by SpectreKP:

I also kinda kicked a hornet nest

No you didn't. All you did is claim the pvp community is full of cheaters, which, we as the developers follows it very closely, can guarantee you is not the case. All your claims are based on "those person's can't be that good" (they are) or "surely they are doing win trading when they organize matches between themselves" (no they do proper fair games). For all of this you can't present proof and all of this information is "second hand".

Why is there someone with 102 losses on the leaderboard despite the fact they have 19 wins

Because they are simply not good? They have a couple wins against even worse players or simply by luck, but mostly lose against actual good players? You are new to PvP, lets say you play for 120 matches on the leaderboard, what do you expect how your win/loss statistic would look? Unless you're an awesome quick learner it might very well look similar to that person.

When you see Brutus, you immediately think: I have to destroy this creature, because if he gets off either power focus or receives all out offence, with a heavy punch he can basically wipe out any creature in a single hit. If he gets both off by round 2, he's able to ram charge your entire team into oblivion. I've presented everyone with a Brutus; the leaderboard cheat/win-boost method with communication and extended search. Now come up with a way to beat it before it can Ram Charge.

Exploits like this are generally what beta testers are meant to find and report,

We do have betatesting for balancing and your presented "exploit" is just one of many solid teams - feel free to queue it up and you will quickly realize that there are countless of other team compositions that can beat it. But I fear you are not here to present actual proof, just baseless accusations/claims.

[SpectreKP]

Originally posted by Rilvenar:

I hope that you can understand that we cannot just change people's behavior. Cheating is an age old habit and no amount of rules / preventive measures will ever completely stop that.

This is the depressing truth, but I'm at least glad to have spoken at all. I apologise for the rather wide net of accusations, but it was the quickest way to get attention from the community itself and see the temperament of the people within. Basically.. I was trying to get a read on anyone who was willing to send me a message to see if my actions to see if anyone using this method would self expose themselves.

Once again, I am not on the discord, so no I have not personally read any of the reactions and am only hearing second-hand information.. which was on the day of my post, apparently people in the chat started defending themselves and saying that they were doing private matches, not public ones. I personally found that kinda distasteful of a reaction, as you shouldn't need to defend yourself if you're innocent (after all, the codes for each match would either be listed in the discord or could be screenshot from private messages with matching dates), so I pushed a bit further with the idea that setting up an anti-exploit/cheat for public/official matches would be beneficial for the majority. Sorry if I upset people with the somewhat aggressive behaviour, and sorry for being suspicious of peeps~ <3

As for preventative measures that I can think of that would allow for evidence, players could simply screenshot the leaderboards every now and then and look for any sudden big changes in a player's wins or losses. Although this may be hard with consoles due to the nature of transferring images to PC and the potential to corrupt save data (my poor octotraveler save..), and is probably the least reliable way to handle the exploit.

[SpectreKP]

Originally posted by Sersch:

But I fear you are not here to present actual proof, just baseless accusations/claims.

I am sorry about the clickbait title, that was based on the idea that I was told that the player Juff has every version of the game.

I was just told from my "second hand informer" that he'd just entered the online pvp discord with the intention of going into private matches (but he didn't directly mention it and wanted to keep the conversation natural) and was immediately arranged into the public matches, there were no codes shared. However he doesn't want to cause a big fuss and won't bring this up. I will drop this topic for your sake as I seem to have upset you with "baseless accusations" and as you stated, I lack "Concrete evidence". You care about your players, and I respect that.

As for how I'd do if I actually entered pvp in a natural way without using extended search, specifically for 120 matches, I'd probably win at least 60 of them, or at least win up until the point very skilled players naturally entered my regular matchmaking. The reason being that while I'm not good at the game, I'm not as you'd put it "simply not good". If I were to actually attempt such a gauntlet, for starters I'd actually have a proper team rather than 4 good monsters and a gimmick. I'd also have multiple teams and counters set in place for my likely opponents for my current ranking. The only reason I don't is because I don't care. It's kind of a hassle to look through 101 monster's skills and shifts, pull out 6 that work perfectly together, get the most appropriate equipment and accessories for the specific team and then fully upgrade them.. and then min-max the team through trial and error until it's perfect.. multiple times for each team. It's that kind of thing that made me loathe pokemon matches against other players, or pvp in darksouls games. All it takes to be good is the drive to actually put in the work and research, and I wouldn't actually enter official matches without doing these steps first.

[Rilvenar]

Originally posted by SpectreKP:

Originally posted by Rilvenar:

I hope that you can understand that we cannot just change people's behavior. Cheating is an age old habit and no amount of rules / preventive measures will ever completely stop that.

This is the depressing truth, but I'm at least glad to have spoken at all. I apologise for the rather wide net of accusations, but it was the quickest way to get attention from the community itself and see the temperament of the people within. Basically.. I was trying to get a read on anyone who was willing to send me a message to see if my actions to see if anyone using this method would self expose themselves.

Once again, I am not on the discord, so no I have not personally read any of the reactions and am only hearing second-hand information.. which was on the day of my post, apparently people in the chat started defending themselves and saying that they were doing private matches, not public ones. I personally found that kinda distasteful of a reaction, as you shouldn't need to defend yourself if you're innocent (after all, the codes for each match would either be listed in the discord or could be screenshot from private messages with matching dates), so I pushed a bit further with the idea that setting up an anti-exploit/cheat for public/official matches would be beneficial for the majority. Sorry if I upset people with the somewhat aggressive behaviour, and sorry for being suspicious of peeps~ <3

As for preventative measures that I can think of that would allow for evidence, players could simply screenshot the leaderboards every now and then and look for any sudden big changes in a player's wins or losses. Although this may be hard with consoles due to the nature of transferring images to PC and the potential to corrupt save data (my poor octotraveler save..), and is probably the least reliable way to handle the exploit.

We generally appreciate people wanting to take care of the community and of course fair play. But as you base your information on mostly speculation and second-hand info and as we are in close contact with our player base on our official discord and are 100% not aware of problematic cheating behaviour, we will not take any more action here. As the way of accusation went in this threat and the negativity and missing information/proof, this was an inappropriate way of handling this matter, which is why I'll be closing this thread now. We do hope that you and your brother can still enjoy the game and PvP and if you feel the need to discuss this matter, you are welcome to join the Discord and directly engage with the people. Note that this is an official warning towards you, as we do not tolerate baseless accusations towards members of our community